Anomaly
by Dolorose-Lalonde
Summary: In the strange, post-apocalyptic Earth kingdom of Alternia, the Empress decrees the mutated "Anomalies" eligible to be killed at sight once they reach the "Culling Age" of thirteen. A group of these outcasts try desperately to unseat the tyrannical rule.
1. Chapter 1

_Once an Alternian child reaches thirteen, they will either be deemed normal and functional and welcomed into Society, or be cast out as an Anomaly. This age is referred to as the Culling Age, for obvious reasons._

_To have strangely coloured eyes, is to be an Anomaly._

_To be physically disabled of natural, accidental, or intentional causes, is to be an Anomaly._

_To have animalistic features, or instincts that could be deemed animalistic, is to be an Anomaly._

_To have strangely coloured skin, is to be an Anomaly._

_To show an interest in necromancy or the occult, or to openly participate in these practices, is to be an Anomaly._

_A child could be born an Anomaly, or they could become one; once they reach Culling Age, they are a menace to Society and are eligible to lawfully die as the local authorities deem fit. If an Anomaly is seen in public, they must be killed and their bodies used for scientific purposes. Anybody who fails to carry this out could face penalty of death._

_Long live the Empress._

**A/N: Sooo, I guess I've decided to give in and make a Homestuck AU? This is in the semi-historic, semi-futuristic kingdom of Alternia; all the trolls are humans on Earth, however, due to unexpected biological effects from nuclear warfare; many humans have faced physical mutations. **


	2. Chapter 2

At age seventeen, Equius Zahhak has long since concluded that it will be the women in his life that will be the death of him.

Aradia Megido, the object of his affections and the bane of his existence. Fourteen, on the cusp of the Culling Age, was a bad time for her mother to be convicted and burned as a witch, a "demoness". (Which personally, sounded rather primitive for such a seemingly "advanced" society. The cars and suburban houses greatly contrasted the hissing, smoking wooden stake to a laughable point.) Aradia; terrified of sharing her mother's fate at the hands of people whose paranoia never seemed to go away, she'd fled to Equius's home region, the quiet and vaguely barren Casil.

Overwhelmed with a pity and infatuation that was quite foreign to him, he had let the ragged witch's daughter live with him, working alongside Equius and the dull uniformity of his mechanics. That was nearly two years ago, and despite her eccentricity and her continued scorn of his blundering romantic advances, he and Aradia shared a comfortable relationship that had become familiar over her time spent in his home.

Equius was worried, though. Aradia was showing the interest in the morbid and deathly that her mother had, and many Casilian girls had grown venomously envious of Aradia's striking beauty. Equius becomes increasingly acquainted with this nagging concern as her sixteenth birthday nears. As Aradia unknowingly let herself become the object of envy and suspicion, he gets more and more worried that she will be cast out as an Anomaly, or worse, killed on the spot as one.

It was too late for Nepeta.

Friends with Equius since childhood, Nepeta had run off to live with other Anomalies the minute she turned sixteen, before the Drones came for her. All her life, Nepeta's known that she wouldn't ever be conceived as normal; a girl too wild to be assimilated into Society. Frankly, Equius was surprised that she hadn't run away sooner; her cat-like features have been prevalent since the frigid autumn day when he had met her, a small and pale-skinned thing alone and batting around the carcass of a mouse. Her brutal, pointed fangs had scared the other children; and her slanted predator-cat eyes were "that of a savage", or so according to most people.

To Equius, her eyes held nothing but playfulness, her fangs lost in the friendly beam of her smile. She really was quite harmless, but with Anomalies, people did not care either way so long as they ended up a corpse under their boot.

Despite the people's unhidden malice towards her, Nepeta visited him in secret, trailing in the starkly rotting smell of her prey. He always felt better around her; more open, more light somehow. Although Equius had been raised to respect the boundaries of the Empress's Society, he was beginning to think that any Society that would banish a girl like this had to be _wrong_ in some way.

When he wasn't worrying about Aradia or Nepeta, he'd worry about himself.

Because he knew better than anyone else what happened to people that associated with those Society cast away.

She always comes during the night. You'd look up, your hands stained with sweat and grease, and she'd be crouched on your windowsill; more often than not covered in dirt and animal's blood.

Sweat and grease. Dirt and blood. Mixed with Aradia's constant smell of dust and incense, it seems your house would be destined to smell horrible for the rest of your natural life.

_Hi, Equius!_ She'd grin, wriggle forward on her feet and tackle you to the ground with a giggle.

You'd lay there on the metal-littered tiles for a bit, just hugging each other and sighing. Nepeta's visits were much too far and few between than you can take. You'd be simply too elated at the sight of her to do much more than hold her close. She'd sit up then, still perched on your stomach, and ask, _How've you been?_

And while a good amount of time you'd answer with something mundane (And she still acted absolutely riveted by your words, bless her.), you'd occasionally find yourself pouring out your ever-present worries. She listens intently, her tail twitching and curling in on itself. She asks, with a playful smile on her face but a deeper, more serious implication, _And what about that purretty friend of yours?_

You heave a great sigh; the scent of cinnamon and dead things linger in the stagnant air. Aradia is awake, it seems._ …Strange. She is acting strange. She was strange, before, but now it's-…_ You run a muscled hand through lank, oily hair. _…Not everyone finds it as endearing as I. If she doesn't start behooving herself and start trying to cease all this depravity of hers, she's going to be in a lot of trouble come April._

Nepeta nods grimly, licking at her unsheathed claws._ If you want, she can come with me! Maybe I can teach her how to hunt._

It is bad enough for you to have to see Nepeta only once in a blue moon, but the thought of being in the same situation with Aradia…

You nod stiffly._ Yes, that would be the best course of action._

Nepeta's bright yellow eyes flicker knowingly. _You can come with us, you know, she states matter-of-factly. You can come with us and then it'll be you and me and her and the others. It'll be like it used to be!_

You know that Nepeta misses spending time together with you just as much as you do. She peers at you expectantly, and you can't bear to look at her when you grumble, _I do not think I can. Living like that may be acceptable for you and Aradia, but it is not of my station to-_

_To hell with your station!_, she hisses, and before you can reprimand her for her language, she continues, _Your father did the same, didn't he?_

You take a deep breath, pinch the bridge of your nose. _He was different. He was disowned as a disgrace because he took pity on an Anomaly._

Nepeta sits up, crossing her arms and pouting at you; giving her the petulant look of a child scorned. _And giving Aradia room and board for two years isn't 'pity'?_

You don't have time to say anything, just to sit up and frown until Nepeta leans over and kisses your sweaty cheek. Slipping lithely out the window once more, she calls, _Think about it, Equius!_

And leaps.

**A/N: I'm thinking that Alternia is divided into regions; each named with the shortened names of the troll's Lands? Like, Equius lives in Casil. (The Land of Caves and Silence.)**

**And I made Aradia a year younger than Equius.**


	3. Chapter 3

Her name was Vriska Serket, but people really only knew her as the gangly spider queen with the blacked-out lens.

Tavros Nitram really only knew her as the girl who kissed his lips and shattered his legs.

It was when Tavros had just turned fourteen when the Serket girl had suddenly settled in his tiny little desert town like some unprecedented sandstorm; arms crossed in disapproval as she sat sprawled out in the back of a pickup truck. A queen, surveying a particularly lowly lot of subjects with the one cerulean eye that peeked out from behind her glasses. The other one was hidden. The lens covering it had been blacked out, maybe with a marker by the looks with it. As if that wasn't the only thing bizarre about the newcomer, she'd also been terribly vague about where she'd moved from; people rarely moved from location to location. All she'd done was spin wild tales about the ocean that frankly, nobody believed.

It didn't matter though, that those covered lens could be masking some hideous Anomaly, or that her stories about swashbuckling pirates and fire-eyed dragon girls were downright ridiculous. All the children of their town with their heat-ruled boredom had been absolutely enraptured by this glamorous, stick-sharp girl. Within a week, she'd taken her place as the resident queen bee (spider, perhaps; it seemed more fitting for a sly sprite like her). There was an aura of power and confidence that emanated from her, even though she had bones thin as a rail and hair ragged as a feral child's.

She was a vicious upstart that beat up boys not two seconds after flirting with them, and though people were curious about the Serket girl's other eye, nobody dared to even think about finding out for themselves.

Nobody except Tavros, anyways.

To her, he was probably just another conquest. Even with the strong build and easy smile that should have signaled generic teen-boy arrogance, Tavros Nitram was like a little boy who hadn't yet grown into his body. He read fairytales and played with children's card games; he brought home stray animals to play with instead of other boys. He was warm-eyed innocence and faltering self-esteem, and she was…_her._

A few months before his fifteenth birthday, she targeted Tavros for some unfathomable reason and began to taunt him relentlessly until one day, when she'd dragged him behind the school building and smashed her lips to his. There was an air of disappointment about her when he didn't return it, and they had both walked away with sour tastes in their mouths.

It was his first kiss. Funny, that it'd get wasted on the girl about to ruin his life.

Two hours later, she pushed him down a flight of stairs, but he stops himself about halfway down. As he staggered to his feet, face burning with indignant confusion, she'd smiled at him from the top of the stair-rail.

After that, she had become even more persistent in making his life miserable, until it had escalated into one pivotal moment in their sparse schoolyard. There was only one school in the entire town, and Tavros had grown up thinking of the schoolyard as a safe place where he could play Fiduspawn and pretend to be Peter Pan.

Now, two weeks before his fifteenth birthday, it was the place where he was being shoved into the ground, dirt up his nose and in his mouth while Vriska stood over him, demanding that he _fight back for once, for fuck's sake, you lamey-lame piece of-_

Kids were gathered around, staring expectantly down at him. It wasn't the first time she's done this. Vriska's already challenged the toughest of their meager Sanzean town to "duels", and all had come away with bruised cheeks and wounded prides. Now, it looked like she was moving on to easier targets. Nonetheless, Tavros could hear other kids goading him on, expecting a show.

That's when Tavros Nitram displayed his first and last show of aggressiveness. Planting the palms of his hands into the grass, he shoves himself onto his knees and onto his feet and catches her off-guard. He _actually_ catches her off-guard, and he can see her glitter-glass smile fade as he pivots and takes a swipe at their spider queen's face.

Her glasses fall to the ground, and as Tavros straightens his back and begins to realize just what he's done, Vriska's hands fly to her face and she _shrieks_.

There was one eye, the cerulean-blue eye that everyone's already been shown. (Debatably, the only "pretty" thing about her.)

The _other_, however.

Vriska Serket _had_ no other eye.

The other children gape in astonishment, and it's like a spell has been broken. Suddenly, instead of the fearful admiration she's racked up among their populace, she's met with the jeering and the fear and the pitiful looks of an Anomaly. The minute she turned fifteen, she would no longer exist in the eyes of society. As guilt washes over him, Tavros starts to babble an apology, reaching out to help her. He's met with a slap on the cheek and a vague flash of blonde and blue as Vriska runs home.

The next day, she shoves him down the stairs again. This time, he falls down all the way. He can't feel anything below his torso by the time he lands, and as he looks up, he sees that she's not smiling this time.

In the clinic two days later, he finds out that he's been permanently paralyzed. That his legs are useless, now.

He will reach Culling Age in eleven days. Usually on his birthday, he and his father would hold a small but joyous celebration. This time, they'll be celebrating with his banishment or death.

And he thinks, _Of course._

_If she's going down, she's going to take me with her._

__**A/N: God, how long has it been since I updated this thing?**


	4. Chapter 4

Tavros hasn't seen her since.

Since he was discharged from the clinic, feeling his father's hands all heavy like sorrow on his shoulders, he has not seen heads or tails of Vriska Serket.

He's been cooped up in his room, since, surrounding himself with his pets and his playing cards, trying and failing to forget the fact that his life would end in less than two weeks. So naturally, he's been even less privy to town gossip as usual. But apparently, word's been going around that the one-eyed girl had fled Sanze sometime last nightfall.

Other people claim that the government's already come for her. That she let herself die for the good of the Empire. Tavros _laughed_ at that one.

Now, it's a sad, stale Monday night and Tavros's birthday is exactly five hours away. Come daylight, government officials will appear on the doorstep, ready to make his father hand him over by any means necessary. (They're called Drones; hulking, emotionless men that terrified nearly everyone they encountered on sight. Of course, that was mostly because most people they encountered were slated to die by their hand.)

Tavros knows how it will go. His dad would sigh sadly and shake his head in that slow, melancholy way of his. And then he'll leave his only son to the culling fork's mercy without a second word.

It was pretty horrible, but what else could be done?

* * *

Now, Tavros sits at the window seat in his room, looking outside. The moonlight is casting light and shadow on the stagnant desert sands of the place he's known all his life, and lighting up the cold metal of his wheelchair.

He's not crying. He's already done plenty of that. Now, he just scrunches shut his wide, muddy brown eyes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten the way they teach you in preschool. People have been calling him a coward all his life. Maybe this way he'll be able to meet _something_ bravely, even if that something is his death.

His reverie ends, snapping shut like a thick book, when he hears a tapping little scritch-scratch on glass. Frowning, Tavros opens his eyes and turns his gaze, only to meet a familiar flash of cerulean blue.

Vriska is leaning against his window, a rock in her hand and a backpack slung over her bony shoulder. The moonlight hits her from behind, illuminating her like some terrible one-eyed goddess. She frowns and mouths something: _Open the window._

He complies, and she slips inside like the ragged shadow. The cold night air comes in with her, and Tavros isn't sure just what it is that's giving him goosebumps right now.

She casts her eye disapprovingly over his room and mutters something containing the words _dork_ and _lame_, before her attention swivels back to Tavros himself. "What are you still doing here?", she demands, looking at him in exasperation. "I know you're all crippled and useless now, but that doesn't mean you have to be a sitting duck."

Tavros wants to say a lot of things. He wants to say that as someone who was now officially wheelchair-bound, he _was_ in fact a sitting duck. He wants to remind Vriska that it was her that had paralyzed him in the first place. Instead, he says numbly, "Where would I go?"

She grins and spreads her arms out grandly. "Anywhere. _Everywhere._ The ocean, maybe. I've been to the ocean before, you know." That, he knew, was a lie. The ocean was a place strictly reserved for the highest of nobility, as well as the Empress herself. They resided in beautiful seaside harbors nobody else could access. Most Alternians have never even seen the ocean.

Ignoring this, he just looks up at her questioningly. "Is that what you're going to do?"

"Of course! What, were you expecting me to die here? In the middle of goddamn _nowhere_? Give me some fucking credit."

She clamps a hand onto the back of his wheelchair. "See, I've been thinking about this for a while. Even before your lame little ass got me discovered. I'm going anywhere and everywhere and maybe the ocean, too. Maybe I'll give the Empress what-for, for making some really awesome people into pariahs. I mean, come on! Half-animal hybrids? Necromancers? We could have a regular _army_ going on here. Shove Miss Prissy-Fish off her throne and rule in her stead."

He didn't have a single idea what she was talking about. In all honesty, he kind of just wanted her out of his house so you could live the last few hours of his life in relative peace.

But then she leans into his face, grinning sharply. "I'm leaving tonight, and you're coming with me."

"I-_What_?"

"Oh, are you deaf as well as crippled now? You're coming with me. You're the one who got me into this, remember? Besides," she pauses to inspect some dirt under one of her overgrown nails. "I need a lackey."

Vriska raises an eyebrow, still lit up from behind by the bizarre Alternian moon. "So that's that. We're in on this together, so what's your name?"

What was his name. She kissed him and fought him and ruined his life, and she didn't know _what his name was_.

He swallows audibly. "Tavros Nitram."

"Nice to meet you.", Vriska says curtly, then leans in further. Her hot breath presses at the shell of his ear. "You'll see, Nitram. We don't need this bullshit small-town normalcy. We're gonna be fucking _legendary_."


End file.
